Historical voices

The fact is, such was my dread of leaving the little cabin, that I wished to remain little forever, for I knew the taller I grew the shorter my stay.

There is, after all, but little difference in the measure of contentment felt by the slave-child neglected and the slaveholder’s child cared for and petted.

It is not even within the power of slavery to write indelible sorrow, at a single dash, over the heart of a child.

My grandmother! my grandmother! and the little hut, and the joyous circle under her care, but especially she, who made us sorry when she left us but for an hour, and glad on her return,—how could I leave her and the good old home?

I dreaded the thought of going to live with that mysterious “old master,” whose name I never heard mentioned with affection, but always with fear.

The liability to be separated from my grandmother, seldom or never to see her again, haunted me.

Children have their sorrows as well as men and women; and it would be well to remember this in our dealings with them.

Grandmammy was, indeed, at that time, all the world to me; and the thought of being separated from her, in any considerable time, was more than an unwelcome intruder.

The absolute power of this distant “old master” had touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel iron, and left me something to brood over after the play and in moments of repose.

It is a successful method of obliterating from the mind and heart of the slave, all just ideas of the sacredness of the family, as an institution.

But it is in harmony with the grand aim of slavery, which, always and everywhere, is to reduce man to a level with the brute.

The practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring the latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting, except at long intervals, is a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the slave system.

I learned when I grew up, that my master—and this is the case with masters generally—allowed no questions to be put to him, by which a slave might learn his age.

They measure the ages of their children by spring time, winter time, harvest time, planting time, and the like; but these soon become undistinguishable and forgotten.

They keep no family records, with marriages, births, and deaths.

Few slave-mothers know anything of the months of the year, nor of the days of the month.

I never met with a slave who could tell me how old he was.

A person of some consequence here in the north, sometimes designated father, is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice.

If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it for ever worthy of the saving.

Let North and South, let all Americans, let all lovers of liberty everywhere, join in the great and good work.

Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it.

Let us turn slavery from its claims of moral right, back upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of necessity.

Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit if not the blood of the Revolution.

Our Republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust.